Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The making of Fruit Ninja Style - Strawberry

After dinner today, I went to night market nearby. I saw the strawberry at one of the stall and I decided to be a fruit ninja tonight! hai...yak~ First, chopped the strawberry into few pieces. Don't mess up the order of the slice. Then, carefully slide them into the stick with slightly different orientation (to create the illusion that the strawberry being chopped apart at mid air). Hang the stick in any possible way. I prefer hang it horizontally because the strawberry slice wouldn't stick together easily. I choose a white wall as background because its easier to clone out the stick later in the Lightroom. The knife at the back of strawberry slice to give more dramatic effect. The stage is set.

The flash light from the top mimic the directional light
source. A white wall as background and of course the
knife of a ninja!

Now I would like to talk about gear. Any camera would do. I prefer an external flash to give a slight edgy look on the image by giving some directional light. My flash is triggered by YongNuo 603. You can get as cheap as RM150 a pair. However, this trigger only support manual flash power. No TTL here. I stopped down to f/8 to give more depth of field at such a close distance. I'm on auto ISO by accident! We are ready to shoot.

The exposure for me is kinda try and error. Use manual exposure to get complete control over the exposure. I did not do it on this time, but the idea is kinda straight forward. If it is too bright, stop down the aperture or the flash power. Vice versa. After a few test shot, here is what I can come out with.

I import the photo into Lightroom and start removing the stick (use clone tool), adding some contrast, adjusting the colour hue particularly on red and orange channel, and add some vignetting at corner to give more punchy look. The whole process take less than 10 minutes to complete.

Fruit Ninja with Strawberry COMPLETE!

Hopefully this gives you an idea how you can unleash your creativity in photography even if you are stuck at home. A photograph a day, keep your worries away!